Old Hard Drive new PC

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Bron Williams

Commendable
Oct 15, 2016
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I recently bought a new PC, with a totally clean hard drive. But there are things on my previous drive(s) that I want to recover. Is it possible to for me to use my old drives, or recover the files from them? I've heard from different sources that I can just plug it in and get all my things, and from others saying it's impossible. My OS on both hard drives (old one and new one) is Windows 10 Home.

To summarise: How can I get my old HD on a new PC, why are different sources telling me different things, and can attempting to format anot her HD be harmful to my PC?
 
Solution
Colif
It should be fine. All you need to do is make sure the hdd(s) you add are not added to the boot order in bios and it/they will be seen as just another hdd - you can't boot off it but you can copy files off it. That would be the easiest option.

Sometimes win 10 might actually boot fine off the old hdd, sometimes it will just go nope. But if you just add them as storage and not boot drives, it won't be a problem

Formatting drives shouldn't be a problem. You will need to use diskpart clean to do it as disk management won't let you delete an old install - see : http://www.windowscentral.com/how-clean-and-format-storage-drive-using-diskpart-windows-10
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Colif

Colif

Win 11 Master
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Jun 12, 2015
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It should be fine. All you need to do is make sure the hdd(s) you add are not added to the boot order in bios and it/they will be seen as just another hdd - you can't boot off it but you can copy files off it. That would be the easiest option.

Sometimes win 10 might actually boot fine off the old hdd, sometimes it will just go nope. But if you just add them as storage and not boot drives, it won't be a problem

Formatting drives shouldn't be a problem. You will need to use diskpart clean to do it as disk management won't let you delete an old install - see : http://www.windowscentral.com/how-clean-and-format-storage-drive-using-diskpart-windows-10
 
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